1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a cable assembly, and more particularly to a high speed Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) cable assembly.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Parallel ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) and parallel SCSI (Small computer System Interface) are two dominant disk interface technologies in past long period. The parallel ATA disks are widely used in desktop PCs and mobile PCs, and the parallel SCSI disks are mainly used in high-volume servers and subsystems. As disk interconnect speeds continue to rise, existing parallel ATA and parallel SCSI buses are reaching their performance limits because that parallel transmissions are susceptible to crosstalk across multiple streams of wide ribbon cable that adds line noise and can cause signal errors—a pitfall that has been remedied by slowing the signal, limiting cable length or both. In view of the requirements for a high-speed transmission, an organization, named Serial ATA (SATA) Working Group proposes a specification defining a SATA interface. SATA interface is developed with a fast signal transmission speed of up to 1.5 Gbps between storage devices (such as hard disks, floppy drives, CD-ROMs, and DVDs) and a motherboard. Numerous advantages of SATA make it gradually replace Parallel ATA and Parallel SCSI interfaces and become the next generation personal computer storage interface. Correspondingly, SATA connectors and SATA cable assemblies have been designed and developed by many companies in the art.
A conventional SATA cable connector assembly is disclosed in art for connecting a first electrical device, such as a motherboard in a personal computer or a server with a second electrical device, such as a hard disk of the personal computer or the server. The cable connector assembly comprises cable means having opposite two ends, and a first and a second connectors each connected to one end of the cable means. The first and the second connectors both receive a plurality of power and signal contacts. The cable means comprises power cables for transmitting power between the first and the second connectors and signal cables for transmitting signal between the first and the second connectors. Therefore, one such one-to-one cable assembly is only for connecting the motherboard with one hard disk. As widely known, a storage device of the personal computer or the server has only a limited storage capability, which is hard to meet users' higher and higher requirements. In this case, a motherboard having at least two SATA interfaces which can simultaneously connect with at least two hard disks gradually springs up in nowaday market. Correspondingly, at least two SATA cable assemblies with mentioned structure are simultaneously used to transmit signal and power between a motherboard and at least two hard disks. However, using large numbers of cable assemblies must increase complexity and occupy larger space in the electrical device.
Another conventional SATA cable assembly entitled “SATA INTERFACE RELAY CONNECTOR AND ITS APPLICATION” is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,719,591. The cable assembly comprises a repeator connector 11 having a signal section 11a and a power supply section 12a, a signal connector 11c, a power input connector 12b, a signal cable 11b for connecting the signal section 11a with the signal connector 11c, and a power cable 12d for connecting the power supply section 12a and the power input connector 12b. The cable assembly is used for transmitting signals between a computer and a peripheral device, such as a 5.25-inch CD ROM, DVD ROM, CD-R, and CD-RW drives as well as mobile racks. However, the similar problem is existed. When the computer wants to communicate with a plurality of peripheral devices, a number of cable connector assemblies have to be used.
Hence, in this art, a new type SATA cable assembly to overcome the above-mentioned disadvantages of the prior art will be described in detail in the following embodiments.